


Plot, Length, Happy Endings: A Jedi Wants Not These Things

by Snapjack



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, The Force Awakens - Fandom, The Last Jedi
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Drabble Collection, F/M, Ficlet, Ficlet Collection, One Shot, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-16 04:54:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16078850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snapjack/pseuds/Snapjack
Summary: All my Star Wars ficlets, one-shots, and prompt responses in one place.





	Plot, Length, Happy Endings: A Jedi Wants Not These Things

**Author's Note:**

> This is where I'm putting all my Star Wars minis, to be added to whenever I feel like it. Looking for fully realized plots and a sense of resolution? These aren't the ficlets you're looking for. Looking to snap an invigorating ammonia capsule of sadness under your nose? Come to the right place, you have.

 

_**Written to prompt: "first kiss".** _

 

 

She didn't think it was going to happen in a cave in an asteroid. 

 

She didn't think it was going to happen, period. 

 

 

Well. That's a lie. She had thought about it, a little. There were moments. Little ones. He'd be repairing something or bashing something or repairing something that he'd bashed, and she would have to squeeze past him in the narrow corridors of the ship, and instead of stepping forward and pressing himself against the bulkhead _like a normal courteous human being_ , he would step **_backwards_** , _into her_ , pressing her up against the opposite wall with his back and his rear and his thighs and his warmth all down the length of her body. The move took only a beat, just one step back, then one step forward, he wouldn't trap her like a child would, it was just a... press. And then he'd release her to go on her way and she would, just a little more flustered than before. And... sweatier. And more disheveled. 

 

He seemed to like making her disheveled, would reach up sometimes when they were leaning over battle plans or blueprints and, without looking, slide a finger under some of the hair she kept up in buns, tugging a few glossy strands out of their moorings and letting them drop down towards the table. He never looked at her, just reached up and did it while he was talking about fuel to weight ratios or revolutions per parsec or something, and it was like a dare to see if she'd yell in front of everyone. And she didn't, she didn't want to give him the satisfaction, didn't want to give his juvenile behavior the reward of her attention. 

 

That maybe wasn't the only reason that she didn't. 

 

So there were... reasons. That she liked him. She liked that he called her "Princess". That's not the official address, actually. No one uses that. The proper way to address a princess is, and always has been, "Your royal highness". If she is ascendant to the throne, "Your majesty" is acceptable. But "Princess," sliding out of his mouth, sounded less like courtesy and more like a tease, more like a slur, more like a... well, it sounded... dirtier. In a nice way. Princess. 

 

She liked that he always threw her tools without looking. If she asked for a wrench, it would go flying through the air without so much as a heads-up, and it was up to her to catch it, let it thwack into her palm with a meaty sound. And when he wanted something, he just held out his hand and barked for it, never looked to see how she was handing it to him, just trusted that she'd hand it to him handle-first instead of blade. She thought about handing it to him the wrong way, once, but decided against it. It made them a team, in a weird way. 

 

She liked that he always found ways to be alone with her, even in the middle of a crowded hangar floor, even in the middle of a tiny Millennium Falcon in the depths of a crater on an asteroid somewhere. He pressed her up against the bulkhead and this time it was front-first, and she looked around and realized that, for the first moment in days, there was no one else there. No Wookie, no bots, just him and her and this little corner of quiet. And he smiled and his eyes fell to her lips, and she knew about two milliseconds before it happened that this was it, he was finally going to kiss her, and then he was, and everything about him and it and this situation was so, _so_ , _**so**_ much worse than she'd thought, in a way that meant _so much better_. 

 ____________________________________________________

 

_**Written to prompt: "Things I never told you."** _

 

 

One night, long after the end of the first war but before the beginning of the second, Chewie and I had a night of passion. It was glorious.

 

Oh, all right, that’s not true. But it should have been. You were a rotten boyfriend and it was only because I was young and silly that I didn’t take better advantage of my looks. I could have had whole slews of affairs. Whole _slews_ of them. Instead I was mooning over you. Tragic.

 

Here is a true thing I never told you: I wanted Ben to be a girl. I nearly cried when I woke up and they told me he was a _he_.  Then, of course, I looked into his eyes and fell completely in love. Totally besotted. By the end of the first week, I’d forgiven him for being born a boy.

 

Maybe I forgave him a little too much.

 

That time the Falcon broke when you were about to leave on a solar orbit, thirteen days before my birthday? That was me.

 

That time you couldn’t find your identicard for a solid week after telling me that the trouble with me was someone taught me how to talk? Also me.

 

That time you discovered your blaster—you know what, I think you get the idea here.

 

I loved you constantly, consistently, disgustingly, from the time I met you onwards. Even when you were being a total nerf herder. That was the biggest secret of all. I couldn’t tell you, because you would have become insufferable. But you knew anyway.

 

 

I’m really glad, at the end, that you knew.

 

 

 

____________________________________________________

_**Written to prompt: "Every word of that was wrong."** _

 

“I love you.”

“I know.”

He kissed her, clasped her to his chest, and she felt like she’d never be cold again. Little did she know, then, how many opportunities life holds for sudden chill.

 

The little dousings that started when Ben was young. “I love you, Ben,” she’d say, only to find him staring back at her in that fixed way. As if the true object of his vision was some three to five inches beyond her skull.

“What is it, sweetheart?” she’d say.

“I was just thinking about if I loved you,” he’d replied. Even then. Seven years old. _If I loved you._

“Of course you do,” she’d responded, automatically, rushing to cover the wound before she even felt its extent. Applying pressure. “You love me and I love you and look out for you. That’s what mommies do.”

“But if you didn’t look out for me,” he said, in his reasonable way, “I wonder if I’d love you. If you didn’t feed me and take care of me.” Right then, it didn’t sink in. It took her a long time—a catastrophically long time—to really hear him.

And then there were the long nights alone, first in a spacious bunk in the Galactic Senate, then on the run in a long series of Rebellion fighters. She didn’t know why she’d ever expected Han to give up smuggling; foolish hope, she guessed. She’d just never been able to shake the disappointment that she hadn’t been enough. Enough to keep him grounded, enough to want a straight job, enough to be a full-time father. They fought about it the first time he returned from a run after Ben’s birth—a full six months after Ben’s birth. He slept on the couch, the first night back. She’d been longing for him, missing him, brimming with stories and longing for him; and then the second he walked in the door, she picked a fight and he gave it to her. Lying there in the dark, sleepless, her body stiff with disappointment, she felt a cold like she’d never felt before, unrelieved by any spark of comfort. She thought she’d found the lowest degree she could tolerate.

 

As it turned out, every word of that thought was wrong.

 

____________________________________________________

**_Written to prompt: "The villain of the story."_ **

 

 

Every time he tried to do something nice for her it backfired. Brought her a blanket made of Bahtrian furs, turns out she’s deathly allergic. Took her on vacation to Gwindar, she spent three out of the four days holed up in holographic conference with some trade federation that can’t agree on a currency to declare bankruptcy in. Asked her to marry him and she balks over some girl he winked at once in a bar he can’t remember on a planet that doesn’t exist anymore.

Then she tells him she’s pregnant with their son when he’s about to go on a year-long run to the outer rim with a hull full of Empirical weaponry.

“NOW you tell me?” he says. “NOW? Well, isn’t THIS a convenient time!”

“Babies are rarely convenient,” she said, her chin jutting out in a way that, at a less combative time, he might have loved.

At this time, he turns on his heel and leaves.

 

That was the beginning of the end of them. From the beginning, Han and Leia have had lousy timing—meeting during a civil insurgency, saying “I love you” on the way into the carbonite chamber… hell, even their first kiss was interrupted by a protocol droid. Nothing has ever come easy to them, but after he misses the birth of their son in a fit of pique, something essential between them breaks irreparably. He regretted leaving three weeks into the trip to the outer rim, at which point he was seventy thousand in debt for the fuel and couldn’t have gone back without being shot in both kneecaps by arms dealers. But when he gets back and a small black-eyed boy looks at him with fear, and his princess looks at him like he’s a stranger, he realizes he would have rather have lost the kneecaps.

Because, as it turns out, he’s the villain of this story.

_____________________________________________________

 

It is difficult to describe the feeling of having Kylo Ren in her head; Rey suspects it is rather like gaining sight after a lifetime of blindness, sound after deafness. After a puddle, an ocean. She is suddenly facing a total lack of vocabulary.

 But Rey met green for the first time at twenty. She is the girl for the job. “It’s like waves, almost, except instead of washes of water you’re getting **_feelings_** ,” she explains excitedly to Chewie, who moans in sympathy. Chewie is a good listener. He is also crammed into the maintenance crawlway with Rey, splicing the antenna for the Chedak frequency radio into the chain of rivets running down the left mandible stabilizer beam. It is a tight squeeze, but Rey needs someone to keep all the tiny fiddly bits from skittering away into the dark recesses, and Chewie will howl like a banshee if she risks brushing up against the Torpex generator. It is like having her own personal alarm system. Together, they have been systematically eliminating every modification made to the Falcon after it left Han’s care.

_“whwokao ah ohrawhao aooo oaanworawh aoacwo rhraaoaoworcahwoc,”_ says Chewie.

“Sure,” says Rey. “It’ll be easy to get at them while I’ve got the housing off.”

“Are you two grease monkeys ever going to get tired of crawling around in here and come have some dinner?” Poe says, peering up into the dark.

Rey looks down past her feet. “We’ll be just a little longer. Chewie wants to clean the transceiver batteries.”

_“ohacwowh ohwo'rcwo waoowhwo,”_ adds Chewie, and Rey translates for Poe, who doesn’t quite have the subtleties of time inflectives yet. “He says ten, twenty minutes tops.”

“I’ll put your plates in the warmer,” Poe says.

“Thank you,” says Rey, smiling fondly down through the furze of Wookiee to the tiny piece of Poe she can see.

_“ah acooakwo aoacworo'rcwo cworchoahwhrr aoacraao rcooracao akooaoraaooo aoacahwhrr,”_ says Chewie.

“I’m sure they _will_ have protatos,” says Rey.

_“ah waoowh'ao oararcwo ahww aoacworo'rcwo oaacworaak, ah anahorwo aoacwosc.”_

“I like them too,” says Rey. It’s true; she does. Everyone from the richer planets turns up their nose at the dehydrated meals. Poe won’t stop moaning about hwotha berries and Belassian peppers and something called Herbs de Lunar Eclipse; even Finn makes a face when they’re served tubers for the ninth day in row. Rey is in heaven. She’s never seen this much food.

_“OHRAAAOOAAC OOHUAO!”_ says Chewie, and Rey jumps away from the humming Torpex coil.

“Thank you, Chewie,” she says, and goes back to the last lug nut. She feels the bloom of heat expand backwards as the gun torques up; sees the minute particles of rust expand outward in explosive halo as the frozen nut breaks free; watches as it falls towards her open palm, spinning as it goes—and opens her eyes in a silent, dark place. Only she and he are there.

“You’re running from me. Why?”

“You’ll hurt my friends,” Rey points out.

“Your friends are terrorists.”

“My friends are my friends,” Rey says, batting away the goad like so much dust in the air between herself and him. His eyes are so dark. She can feel herself drawing towards him, slowly, a frictionless glide...

 

“Rey!! REY! Come on now—REY!” 

She wakes up being slapped—hard—across the face. Poe is so terrified he almost doesn’t notice her eyes have fluttered open; he is winding up for another when Chewie grabs his wrist.

“What happened?” says Rey.

_“rooohu aooohuoaacwowa aoacwo aooorcakwok,”_ says Chewie, as Poe says, “You brushed up against the Torpex generator.”

Then, as one, they add: _“anahorwo rawh ahwaahooao.”_ “You idiot.”

“My arm hurts,” Rey announces.

“Yeah,” Poe says, hoisting her underneath his arm and heading towards the galley. “That’ll happen when you brush up against a half a kee of caged lightning.”

And Rey thinks to herself that Poe has no idea.

 


End file.
